STAFF RESOURCES

RLIN Holdings Screen Examples

The accompanying RLIN holdings screen examples are designed to
demonstrate local Rutgers practices. They were prepared in response to
general questions received from various cataloging staff or at the
specific request of individual staff members.

If you are looking for an example of a practice that is not included
here yet, please submit a request to Bob Warwick
(warwick@rci.rutgers.edu) and your new example will be added to these
files.

Also, please report any errors that you may notice in any of the
examples so that they can be corrected.

The base call number is the longest portion of the call number that
does not change for all volumes cataloged on that record. It will
contain a higher level volume designator when that higher level stays
the same for all volumes and only a lower level changes.

Most items have both a label and a value (e.g., "v.10," "pt.A," "no.43," etc.)
and pass the RLIN error checking routines without a problem. Some items, however,
have only a label and lack a value (e.g, "index," "plates," etc.). These items
generate an RLIN error during data entry and are not accepted by the system in this
form. RLIN does allow us to override its MDES error checking procedure by enclosing
such constructions in parentheses (e.g., "(index)," "(plates)," etc.).

However, labels within parentheses were rejected by our original Geac system
since such constructions did not appear in the valid List of
Approved Volume Designators used by the Geac conversion programs to validate
incoming items. With later upgrades to our Geac system, items with parentheses were
no longer rejected but the parentheses were not removed from an MDES. This has caused
problems in the volume matching process where one item includes parentheses and another
does not, creating some mismatches and other item errors in our local system. Some of
these errors do not show up for many months.